Singapore is a very small country, really one main island and a few tiny ones, at the tip of Malaysia and looking toward Indonesia. People use the same word for the city, because the country almost is the city — a city-state. English, Mandarin, Malay and Tamil are all official; English is what you hear in shops and schools. It is known for being very clean, tightly run, quite strict about rules, and for growing rich unusually fast in the late twentieth century. It is also a big place for business, shipping, and money. Though actually, the name is an old story, not a zoo fact: it came through Malay Singapura from Sanskrit words for “lion” and “city,” so “Lion City.” You will not see wild lions there. A few million people live packed onto that small island; older book figures go out of date.